How to Heartlessly Arbitrage Used Books With a PDA 445
Pickens writes "Michael Savitz writes at Salon how he makes a living armed with a laser bar-code scanner fitted to a Dell PDA. Savitz haunts thrift stores and library book sales to scan hundreds of used books a day and instantly identify those that will get a good price on Amazon Marketplace. 'My PDA shows the range of prices that other Amazon sellers are asking for the book in question,' writes Savitz. 'Those listings offer me guidance on what price to set when I post the book myself and how much I'm likely to earn when the sale goes through.' Savitz writes that on average, only one book in 30 will have a resale value that makes it a "BUY" but that he goes through enough books to average about 30 books sold per day. 'If I can tell from a book's Amazon sales rank that I'll be able to sell it in one day, I might accept a projected profit of as little as a dollar. The more difficult a book will be to sell, the more money the sale needs to promise.' Savitz writes that people scanning books sometimes get kicked out of thrift stores and retail shops and that libraries are beginning to advertise that no electronic devices are allowed at their sales. 'If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?' concludes Savitz."
Re:Added value? (Score:2, Informative)
At the very least he is reducing the price of books, though in some cases he could be saving a book from sitting on the shelf for years till it is finally recycled. He is adding efficiency to the book market.
Re:Depends what you want... (Score:5, Informative)
The only penny he's taking from someone's pocket is from his customer on Amazon.
The store was going to sell it for the price he paid, no loss to them. Could they have sold it for more? Sure. Were they going to? No.
If Slashdotters are so offended by this, they should create some free software that all the stores can use to figure out which books are worth selling on Amazon and help their local thrift store get up and running.
Let the used book stores get it running themselves.
Thrift stores aren't the same as used book stores or other for-profit resale stores. They're run by charities, both to sell things to the community at affordable prices and to make money to support their other programs.
The reason that scanners are not welcome (Score:5, Informative)
I work for a company that is in the used book business. I meet with the people who run the local thrift stores, and the local friends-of-the-library sales. They are very open about why they don't welcome these people to their sales/stores.
The reason people with scanners are not welcome is because they are disruptive and rude to other patrons. Typically these people show up and are waiting when the doors open, they come in and lay claim to an entire section of shelves, or display table and begin sorting into piles by price-point. They stay for hours, and systematically move through the entire inventory. They take up a lot of space, prevent other customers from accessing the merchandise and leave a big mess behind for the staff to clean up.
The reason they don't scan the books and sell them online themselves is because they don't have the staff to do it. It is a great business as a sideline, easy to do, low overhead, moderate profitability. It is an enormous amount of work to do on a larger scale. Many of the chain thrift shops are expanding into online sales, but the smaller ones do not have the resources. Library sales are typically staffed by volunteers with one or two actual employees overseeing the process -they don't have the staff to do more.
Re:This is a job that will disappear (Score:3, Informative)
That's actually the point. Any decent job is going to pay far more than what this guy gets being a trashpicker. Lots of tech-savvy folks are out of work right now though thanks to the economy. Hell, I did this for fun with a mail-order DVD place for a while (several years ago) - signing up for 8 DVDs for $9.99, buy two more at regular prices, cancel [rinse, repeat]. The place who was doing this had several out of print DVDs, and some high-dollar collections that could be flipped on eBay for a profit. I'd buy 3-4 discs I wanted, 4 to flip, pay $40 out of pocket and get $70 on ebay. $30 of work for maybe 1-2 hours of time, plus I got to fill in my DVD collection.
This poor slop could almost do better (on an hourly rate basis) by flipping burgers or working retail at the mall. Any office work would pay better by the hour. He's killing himself working 12 hour days, probably spending a small fortune in gas, all to eek out a pretty modest wage for a college grad.
Re:Depends what you want... (Score:3, Informative)
I have a friend who does this with not only books, but records and DVDs. Records he knows from decades in the industry, no scanner required. Books he generally buys in bulk, he simply scans the ISBN, gets a market price and re-sells. DVDs are interesting. He becomes friends with the managers of various dollar stores and buy them in bulk for a slightly lower cost. Some titles can bring in upwards of $20 a piece if its rare/sought after, otherwise most go for $5.
Why don't people just go to the store and buy them for $1/piece? Because availability is limited in many parts of the country. Coastal port cities with high population tend to have a lot of surplus inventory hanging around in warehouses and a ton of retail outlets to liquidate it at. For used stuff, the higher population density and higher income levels (rich people buy a lot of stuff and throw it out) comes into play. Most of his customers are in the middle of the country, where this stuff is hard to come by.